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Faculty of Pharmacy1. The facultyThe Faculty of Pharmacy or Victorian College of Pharmacy (www.vcp.monash.edu.au) was established in 1881 as the School of the Pharmaceutical Society of Victoria under an apprenticeship system that lasted until 1960 when a three-year course in pharmacy commenced. In the wake of the Commonwealth government’s 1988 white paper on higher education, the College commenced discussions with Monash University . An affiliation agreement and heads of agreement were entered into in 1990 as the first steps towards amalgamation which occurred over the period late 1992/early 1993. Legislation established the college as the equivalent of a faculty of Monash University and provided for its academic affairs to be governed by a college board chaired by the dean. The College occupies the campus at Parkville , five kilometres north of the Melbourne CBD. The CL Butchers Pharmacy Library was established in 1943. After amalgamation with Monash University , the faculty continued playing a large part in the administration of its library. In 1999 the Dean in consultation with the University Librarian, initiated a process to fully incorporate the College library into the Monash University Library system by the end of 2000. The Faculty of Pharmacy offers a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. A degree course in Formulation Science commenced in 2000. This together with the conversion of the Bachelor of Pharmacy course from a three-year to a four-year degree in 1999 led to significant increase in student numbers. The College has a teaching staff of 55, and a student load of 930 including 74 postgraduate, EFTSU. The faculty consists of four departments -- Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Biology and Pharmacology, Pharmaceutics and Pharmacy Practice. Major areas of research include : Medicinal Chemistry – synthesis and characterization of bioactive molecules, NMR spectroscopy, computer-aided molecular design and computational chemistry, protein X-ray crystallography. Pharmaceutical Biology and Pharmacology – pharmacological investigations of antidepressants, antipsychotics, opioids, cannabis and other drugs of abuse, the pharmacology of gut secretion and antidiarrhoeal drugs, autonomic mechanisms, pre and postjunctional agonists and antagonists, receptor differentiation, receptor transduction mechanisms, adenosine and its receptors, pathology and pharmacology of skin disease Pharmaceutics – physicochemical assessment and analytical method development for new drug candidates, stability assessment of potential neuroprotective agents, absorption of drugs by the intestinal lymphatic systems, enhancement of delivery of drugs across the skin, formulation of dry powder inhalers, dispersion of micronised drugs during dissolution Pharmacy Practice – quality use of medicine, pharmaceutical education research, epidemiology and health economics impact of drug related morbidity, practice models, wound management, clinical pharmacokinetics. The Wound Education & Research Group is a part of the Department of Pharmacy Practice, and focuses on clinical and scientific aspects of wound care in a multi-disciplinary framework. The Group has strong links to clinical practice through clinics at Austin Repatriation Medical Centre, in conjunction with the Wound Foundation of Australia, and at the Melbourne Extended Care and Rehabilitation Service. Staff from the group are involved in wound care education for students in Pharmacy, Medicine, Nursing and Veterinary Science. More information about:
2. General policy statement The Collection Development Policy covers printed books and journals, electronic resources, multimedia and any other formats acquired for the Library’s collection. The Policy is regularly monitored to ensure that the selection and acquisition of new resources supports the teaching and research needs of the faculties and their departments. While every effort is made to meet known information needs some gaps in the collection may develop which need attention, and suggestions to address them are welcome. This may be done through liaison with library staff or, for individual titles, using the recommendation form at lib.monash.edu.au/forms/acquisition-request.doc To ensure that the library provides collection materials to support new courses and subjects, completion of a Library Impact Statement lib.monash.edu.au/forms/impact.doc is required. When establishing new research directions, Faculty staff are encouraged to liaise with the library about the provision of supporting information resources. All titles listed as prescribed or recommended reading for teaching subjects are acquired as high priority and in multiple copies depending on student enrolment numbers. This is particularly necessary for undergraduate students, who need access to adequate resources on their home campus. Electronic versions of these texts are also provided where possible, so that access is more readily available regardless of location and number of copies held. The intercampus loans and Document Delivery for undergraduates further support the needs of those students. However, the library cannot acquire every item that could conceivably be needed by Monash staff or students. The reciprocal borrowing scheme enables Monash library users to borrow from other university libraries. Post-graduates and staff may also use the document delivery service to obtain books and articles from other libraries in Australia and overseas. 3. The library's collection a. Location Material purchased for the Faculty of Pharmacy is held on the Parkville campus in the CL Butchers Pharmacy Library. Materials of interest are also purchased by the departments of the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Medicine, for example in the areas of pharmacology, medicinal chemistry, pharmaceutical biology, toxicology and biochemistry. These are located at the Hargrave-Andrew Library on the Clayton campus, or in the libraries of the affiliated hospitals. Some material on biochemistry is purchased by the School of Applied Sciences (Faculty of Science) for the Gippsland and Peninsula libraries, as is material on nursing and health sciences. b. Language Generally only material in the English language is acquired. c. Classification used Monograph materials acquired for the CL Butchers Pharmacy Library are classified using the Dewey decimal classification. Periodicals are not classified and are arranged in title order. d. Formats While no format is excluded, in practice the greater part of the collection is monographs and serials, both printed and electronic. e. Size of the collection Estimated number of monograph volumes purchased per annum: 250 Estimated current size of the monograph collection: 17,000 volumes Number of print serial titles received: 150 current serial titles are received by the CL Butchers Pharmacy Library. f. Significant electronic resources The library is purchasing increased numbers of resources in electronic format, including networked or internet databases, fulltext resources, including suites of electronic journals, and CD-ROM databases that are only accessible within a particular Branch library. As a result, an increasing proportion of the budget for library material for the C L Butchers Pharmacy Library is spent on these resources. These include Indexing and abstracting services
Fulltext databases / electronic journal suites
Subject gateways
70% of the library materials budget for the C L Butchers Pharmacy Library is spent on serials, of which 20% are electronic. g. Coverage of the collection The CL Butchers Pharmacy Library is a special collection for pharmacy, the pharmaceutical sciences and drug technology and drug development. It includes several historic runs of pharmacy journals, and a number of valuable old books on pharmacy and related areas. Many of these were donated to the library by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (Victorian Branch) and its members. Of its type it is the most important collection in Australia . Much of the collection is in the Dewey Decimal Classification areas of 360 social problems and services; 540-547 chemistry; 615 pharmacology and therapeutics and 616 diseases. The main areas of collecting for the C L Butchers Pharmacy Library are detailed below
Students and staff are able to call on the resources of other branches of the Monash University Library to support interests and volume of demand A cooperative agreement with the neighbouring CSIRO Health Sciences and Nutrition, Parkville Laboratory Library permits faculty staff and post-graduate students to access their collection for reference and photocopying. 4. Other significant Monash collections or resources In addition to the collections at the Hargrave-Andrews Library and those of Monash affiliated hospitals there is a significant collection of medical books in the Rare Book collection in the Matheson Library on the Clayton campus. Monash University Library acquired the Australian Medical Association’s Rare Book Collection in 1995. As well, a local book collector is gradually donating his collection of rare medical works under the Taxation Incentive Scheme. His major areas of collection are early Australian medical books, books on fringe medicine and on such phenomena as shell-shock, battle fatigue, RSI and in particular AIDS. There is also a collection of AIDS material – the Ian Gollar Collection, from Fairfield Hospital , as well as collections from other doctors, including a collection on forensic medicine which contains a significant number of 18 th and 19 th century works. (Rare Books available lib.monash.edu.au/rare/) Collections Table(T = teaching level, R = research level)
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